Prime-time Violence Blasted By Study

October 8, 1986|By Jan Gehorsam

PHILADELPHIA — Rock videos, under fire for their blood, gore and slow-motion mayhem, have yet to rival the violence on prime-time television, according to a study published by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications.

''Nothing is as violent as prime-time TV,'' said George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg school and editor of the Journal of Communications, which published the report.

''I think the concerns about rock videos have been exaggerated. There does not seem to be a specific reason for focusing on music videos per se.''

The researchers stopped far short of endorsing music videos, however.

They said their analysis of 42 hours of videos led to the conclusion that they are violent, male-oriented and laden with sexual content, criticisms voiced by feminists and the National Coalition on Television Violence.

About 75 percent of all prime-time shows contain violence, compared with 56 percent of all ''concept videos,'' which dramatize the music, according to the study's authors, Barry L. Sherman and Joseph R. Dominick of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.

The study covered the 1985-86 prime-time season. Gerbner said last week that he wouldn't discuss the new TV season because, he said, impressions usually are misleading.

The study found that music videos don't have as much sex as prime-time television -- 1.4 sexual episodes per minute vs. 1.8 on prime time -- but the sex is more graphic.

Sex in videos has a distinctly adolescent slant that is ''long on titillation and physical activity but devoid of emotional involvement,'' the researchers said.

Women are often depicted as upper-class sex objects who attract lower- class males, as in Billy Joel's ''Uptown Girl'' video, the study said.

Prime-time shows have more violence because they have extended plots, unlike most three-minute videos, Gerbner said.

''With a plot, you need conflict, suspense, something active,'' he said. ''Violence is the cheapest, most active thing going. Not that it's popular -- it's cheap to produce.''

Videos on the MTV network and on such shows as Friday Night Videos and Night Tracks rely less on action and more on the performers and their music, he said.

The researchers found several key differences between videos, which are directed at teen-agers and young adults, and conventional TV, which is aimed at 25- to 49-year-old consumers:

-- Women in videos are more likely to be aggressors than victims, often appearing as ''predatory females.''

-- On conventional television, non-whites are more apt to be victims than aggressors. In videos, non-whites are equally likely to be either.

-- On prime-time television, children, teen-agers and adults all get abused. In videos, older adults, especially mother figures, are the predominant aggressors. The young are regularly persecuted on video by their ''establishment elders'' and also by their non-white peers.

Music videos, like prime-time television, depict a white, male world in which men outnumber women 2-1, the study said. The ratio of whites to non- whites is greater than 4-1.